Have you ever watched a football game being played in the pouring rain with the players absolutely covered in mud? Who usually wins those matches?

With players finding it almost impossible to hold on to that slippery ball, quite often it’s anyone’s guess.

The lead generation function of an organisation is a bit like football. You can have the most highly skilled players but they won’t win a game if nobody can grip that slippery ball. Worse still, if there’s no ball at all, there’s no game at all.

Your football players are your sales people. Highly trained. Great at getting a result.

Your lead generation program is your football … the thing your sales people need before they can score.

Lead generation is a critically important function in any organisation. It bridges the gap between sales and marketing. The trouble is, many marketing departments focus little effort on generating leads. Their marketing activities are focused more on brand awareness. Of course, brand awareness is very important. But it isn’t something your sales division can rely on to meet their monthly sales targets.

Your sales team will know if they see X people this month chances are they’ll get Y results. It makes sense then to have a lead generation program that guarantees to deliver that X no. of leads that your sales people are looking for. Make sense?

Let's take a look at what you can do to ramp up your lead generation activities

1. Ensure your activities are measurable. Find the creative that works the best and develop that as the “control” and measure everything else against it. Measure cost per lead, cost per sale, profit per sale, visitor value (online), and lifetime value of a customer.

2. Use a combination of methods simultaneously – pay-per-click advertising, banner advertising, direct response print ads, direct mail, flyers, direct response tv, direct response radio, telemarketing, tradeshows.

3. Educate don’t sell. People hate being sold. Instead, give them the information they are looking for to get the results they want  – white papers, reports, case studies that build credibility in an understated way, and so on.

4. Understand that all leads AREN’T created equal. There’s usually an inverse relationship between quality and quantity of leads. The higher the number of leads the lower the quality of responses and vice versa.

5. Understand too that in many situations only 10 – 15% of prospective customers are ready to make a purchasing decision right now. That means that only 15 to 25% of respondents are suitable for sales people to speak with right now. With that, a lead conversion program is also vital.

6. Ensure your lead conversion or prospect nurturing program keeps in touch with people at least once a month. Ensure too that it includes a series of monthly newsletters, value-added information pieces, follow up telephone calls, sales letters and promotional offers. Start the relationship off with valuable how-to information and go light on the sell (remembering that people hate to be sold).           

7. Ensure that the people driving your lead generation activities are lead generation specialists. After all, it’s a highly specialist field.

And it’s a field that we specialise in here at Words that Sell. In fact, we have dozens of websites that focus on that for our own businesses, and we also offer a lead generation program for clients too … anything from developing lead generation pieces to managing the entire lead generation program for clients. If you’d like to find out more on how we can generate more leads for your business, just email us at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or call us on +617 3353 1107.